No doubt, times are tough in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, the entire state of Ohio and across the country.
And we need to spend every moment possible figuring out ways to spark a local economic recovery—to put our families, our businesses and our local economy back on their feet.

But from this challenge, I think there is also a great opportunity for our county and region—a long-term opportunity.

I say this because even before the recession hit us, it's no secret that this community should have been doing better, and doing more, to compete in this 21st century economy.  But the good news is that many of the short-term steps we need to take to spark a local recovery also happen to be the building blocks of strategies that will put us on far better footing for the long-term.   So let's use the action called for by this economic crisis to not just solve that near-term crisis, but to make our region far more competitive—more competitive than we've ever been—for the long haul.

First, let's do all we can to help put middle class and working families on more solid financial ground, because these families, and their confidence and stability, will be the engine of any near-term recovery that happens.
To do this, we need to do all we can to help families stay in their homes, rather than fall victim to foreclosure.  We need to help reduce the squeeze our families face from growing costs of health care, prescription drugs, energy, transportation, and the like—as well as provide the financial literacy that allows our families to make the most of what they earn.  And we need to do all we can to provide the type of job training that will equip our families, and our young people in particular, to be prepared for the 21st century jobs that are in high demand.

We are already beginning to do these things to help get through today's economic crisis.  But if we do all these things well, and permanently, we will also build a much stronger economic base for years to come.  
Second, to recover from this tough economy, we need to do all we can to create and sustain good jobs in this community.   This means building off our already strong corporate headquarter base to bring their suppliers and vendors here as much as possible, working to help our small businesses grow, and strategically taking advantage of the job opportunities that will come with green jobs, bioscience jobs, and other growing strategic clusters.  

And to bring jobs here, we must make our region an easier place to do business.  So we are overhauling our development process, while looking to regionalize certain functions—like tax collection and code enforcement—so businesses have the easiest time possible locating, working and expanding in Hamilton County.

And just as it will directly help our families and workers to give them the 21st century job skills they need, having a highly educated and skilled workforce is probably the best way to draw the job-creating businesses that are looking for skilled workers to do the work they need done.  This also means doing all we can to build the quality of life and sense of place that will attract and retain the highly skilled young professionals that are the driving force of the new knowledge economy.

Again, these job creation strategies will not just help in the short-term, but in the long run.

Third, we need to invest.  
And of course investing in infrastructure, in transportation, in community revitalization, in brownfield redevelopment, creates jobs in the near term.   But more importantly, if we're smart, the greater job creation will come after the investments are made.  

Because if we are smart and strategic in our investments, we will have:

• Built roads and rail spurs that lead to new commercial development and greater global access;
• Cleaned up and redeveloped brownfield sites to create development-ready business sites—so we have attractive locations to offer local companies (as we did Graeter's) who want to expand their business, or to firms from outside our area looking for a new place to take their business;
• Created exciting new destinations, like the Banks Project, for visitors, businesses, and residents to live, work and play; and
• Cleaned up our environment and enhanced our quality of life by upgrading our sewer infrastructure, investing in new green technologies across the board, and adding new assets such as bike trails and parks.
  

And importantly, to do all this well, we will need governments and the private sector to partner more closely together than they have before.  In this tough economy, we can not afford to let turf fights, jurisdictional boundaries, and bureaucratic lines waste precious resources, or keep us from getting the job done.
If we proactively do all these things to get our local economy back on its feet, I am confident we will also make ourselves far more competitive over the long haul in this highly demanding 21st century economy.

David Pepper, Hamilton County Commissioner
SoapBlog 1: Real Issues

There are a lot of tough, big, contentious issues in this community.  Large, complicated, controversial, expensive and political issues.  And they take up a lot of time, a lot of debate—and unfortunately most of the media's time too.  And they seem to come up again year after year.

Then there are issues and ideas that seem to make sense to everybody.  And that move our community forward.  And that save money.  And help improve quality of life in other ways.  And that make residents across our community excited about being here.

And for some reason, they are rarely discussed.  But I try to highlight them as much as I can.  Here are a few:

First, let's build a bicycle friendly community—and when I say community, I mean the whole region.  If you've been to Loveland on almost any weekend in spring, summer or fall, you'll see what having basic bicycle infrastructure can do for a community.  

Let's make the whole region a place where people can bike for fun, bike to work, bike to do errands, and anything else. And let's have the downtown Riverfront be the endpoint of bikers from the East and West coming in from bike trails and bicycle friendly streets, and suburban towns and cities also serving as hubs of biking activity.  

GOOD NEWS: We have set up a Bicycle Friendly Committee that is creating a comprehensive action plan to do this. This group also plans to apply to have our region rated as a Bicycle Friendly Community, which would make us one of the first places in Ohio to do so.

Second, let's build a "green" county together.  Every government, business and household in this community can save money and improve the environment at the same time.  But let's not each figure out how to do so on our own—let's do so collectively, where we create one regional blueprint (or should I say "greenprint"), and then every community can work from that greenprint to take the steps that will most help them "green" their operations, their streets, their community.

GOOD NEWS: We have created a Climate Community Partnership within the County to do just that, with more than half the communities around the County sitting at one table, thinking through ways we can all use less energy, reduce our carbon footprint, save money, and improve our environment.

Third, let's not reinvent the wheel 48 times.  This County has so many cities, villages and townships working hard to get the job (many jobs, actually) done at a difficult time.  But with slumping revenues and inflationary costs, our budgets are all strained, and some are having to reduce service because they have no other choice.  So let's create another choice.  

When it makes sense, let's "share" and consolidate the services government provides.  Why have dozens of different entities enforcing codes, or collecting taxes, or purchasing the same supplies, or operating heavy equipment, or even doing things like responding to emergency calls or putting out fires, when that enormous redundancy adds cost, and in some cases, diminishes service quality?

Let's instead figure out which services are better done together—not just saving money, but delivering better service, and being more customer friendly.

GOOD NEWS: We have a public-private Shared Services Committee exploring these areas, and in doing so, have identified a number of areas where "shared services" make the most sense.  This year our goal is to begin implementing these measures.  

The point of these and other efforts is that despite the challenging time, there is much we (public and private) CAN do to improve things.  Indeed, because of the challenging time, it's more important than ever that we explore new ideas and new approaches.  And it almost always makes sense to explore them together.